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Graybar Innovation Lab

Graybar, celebrating its 150th year as a company, has a unique perspective on innovation. It recently shared the secrets of its success at the Research Park Lab.

At iLab, students receive problem sets—potential business challenges they can research and solve to produce a formal recommendation for Graybar. Each problem set has an executive sponsor and a business liaison to provide guidance and support.

“As you might expect, we steer clear of phrases like, ‘That’s how it’s always been done,’ as it tends to stifle the creative process,” said iLab Director Todd Hart. “Failure is also accepted, even celebrated, in this arena—as long as we fail quickly and learn from it.”